Travel

Skiing at The Canyons

Post Omniture Summit, Marc and I stayed the weekend in Salt lake city to go skiing/snowboarding at the Canyons, located just outside of Salt Lake.  This was probably the most difficult placed I have been to date from an altitude perspective.  After 1 run down, which took about an hour, many a break had to be taken before we went back up for another run.  Overall a very fun weekend.

The Canyons

Trip to the British Museum

One of the cool things we did while we were in London a month ago was stumble upon the British Museum which was located just a few short blocks from our hotel.  That place was amazing inside!  The British sure did know how to pillage some colonies.  We spent a few hours here going thru the various exhibits prior to joining Laura for some PIMMS at a nearby restaurant.  Quite good fun!  

Vinod Checking out the Place

Live It Out - Live at Squamish 2011

In a continuing journey to discover North America's great music festivals, I turned my attenion in 2011 to a smaller music festival in Squamish, B.C. simply named "Live at Squamish". With headliners Metric, Weezer, Stars and Girl Talk there was quite enough justification to throw down $200 for two days of music and three days of camping out in the Canadian wilderness.

Squamish for those of you who are unaware is a town in Bristish Columbia along the Sea-to-Sky Highway that travels up the Pacific Ocean coastline. Situated between Vancouver and Whistler, it's just small enough to have the charm of a cozy little tourist town and just big enough to hold a music event such as the one I attended. 

The journey from Seattle to Squamish took about 7 hours after stops for food and weekend camping supplies along the way.  Brief detention at the border by the mounties to search our car and a little stop over in Vancouver later, we were well onk our way into the Canadian Wilderness. I was a bit disappointed to reach Vancouver just before sundown as we didn't get to experience the full sunset that blankets the highway as you make the drive out of Vancouver. 

In all the musical acts were simply phenomenal.  Metric being the show that I wanted to see the most did not disappoint.  Blending in newer music from their most recent album "Fantasies" as well as older stuff from "Live it out" made for one hell of a concert on Sunday Night. Camping was a very pleasant experience as well as we befriended some awesome folks from Canada who let us share in their sweet canadian beers as we did with our american beer.  It would have bee nice for it to be a three day shindig but as Sunday night/monday morning rolled around some heavy rain moved in and it was time to get out of there. Quite the successful trip and something I look forward to doing again next year. 

Check out some of the pictures and video below:

 

Snowy Hell in Billings, MT


Snowy Hell in Billings, MT, originally uploaded by Andrew Sprung.

Man this drive to Seattle seems like it took place oh so long ago..the snowy hell that was leaving Billings was easily the most challenging part of the drive to Seattle. Seeing a tipped over Uhaul on the side of the road didn't leave much to pad the confidence of getting out of Montana alive..yet white knuckled, and wide eyed, I managed to get out of this mess in little over two hours..Winding snow filled roads were not an easy thing to traverse with a Saturn Vue packed to the brim.